Film & Kunst: "Zeichnen bis zu Raserei – Der Maler Ernst Ludwig Kirchner"

In the Film & Art series, Cinema Quadrat and Kunsthalle Mannheim are showing a film about the expressionist painters Kirchner, Lehmbruck and Nolde to accompany the Kunsthalle exhibition:

DRAWING TO THE POINT OF FRENZY - THE PAINTER ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER

DEU/CHE 2001. D: Michael Trabitzsch. Documentary. 86 min. FSK: n. A.

The architecture student Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880 - 1938) was one of the rebels of the contemporary art scene when he and his friends founded the artists' association "Brücke" in Dresden in 1905. The film follows in the footsteps of the important expressionist painter at the places where he lived; short, sober scenes vividly convey how Kirchner found his motifs and the high spirits in which his landscapes, nudes and portraits were created. The rapid, ingenious sketches and drawings, which he recorded almost non-stop in notebooks he carried with him, run through the film like a common thread. The most productive phase of the artist, who also created woodcuts and sculptures, ended with the First World War. Seriously ill and emotionally damaged, he settled in Davos with Erna Schilling, his model and confidante. Defamed as "degenerate" by the National Socialists, he took his own life there on June 15, 1938, fearing for his continued existence.

Introduction: Nina Pfister, art historian